‘Build on green belt land or risk 40-floor tower blocks’ warns housing executive

Leading figures, including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, are calling for houses to be built on the green belt to keep the dream of home ownership alive for renters. It is a sentiment that York’s housing executive Michael Pavlovic agrees with, warning the alternative may be 40-floor tower blocks.

He said: “We are going to have to build on the green belt because there are not enough brownfield sites in a place like York unless people want massive tower blocks built on them. We don’t want 20, 30, 40-floor tower blocks in a place like York. There’s no appetite for it from politicians or the public.”

Mr Pavlovic acknowledged the “huge issue” of housing in York, adding: “We have a population that is being priced out of the city.”

Matthew Freckelton, head of cities for Uber, is running to be the Conservative candidate in the North Yorkshire joint authority mayoral election in 2024 and agrees that councils are being left with little choice.

“We need to ensure that we have thriving communities in the countryside,” he said. “If we don’t build houses in the countryside that are affordable for young people and families, then we’ll have long-term unintended consequences such as school closures because there aren’t kids coming into those areas.

“If we look at the entire country, less than about two per cent has been built upon. Yes, we need to protect the green belt, but if we look at where the green belt actually covers, we can identify plenty of sites that we can build on.”

According to government briefing papers “the fundamental aim of green belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open”.

Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins recently wrote in the newspaper that the green belt is “one of the great creations of postwar British planning.” In his piece, he argued there are other factors to blame for the UK’s housing crisis.

“The fact is that about 60 per cent of Britons own their own homes, against about 50 per cent of Germans, and roughly 50 per cent of Londoners against about 30 per cent of Parisians,” he wrote. “The reality is that housing demand in booming cities is conditioned as much by the overall economy as by new building, which meets less than 10 per cent of property sales.”

But if Labour wins the general election, likely to be held next year, York Council would have more power to build on green belt land. 21,980 hectacres (88.8 per cent) of the York Outer constinuency is Green Belt land.

Meanwhile, York centre has just 430 hectacres (18.3 per cent) of Green Belt land that may be built upon.

Sir Keir recently told The Times: “It’s important for local areas to have the power to decide where housing is going to be.”